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Wessex Poems 

and Other Verses 



By 
THOMAS HARDY 

Author of ''Tess of the D'Urbervilks ^^ etc. 



j With 

j 30 Illustrations by the Author 




o > 



I! NEW YORK AND LONDON 
i ' HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS ' 
1899 






IV THE SAME AUTHOR 



Ethel- 



Despekate Remedies. 
Two ON A Towek. 
The Woodlandeks. 
Far from the Madding 

Crowd. 
Wessex Tales. 
A Laodicean. 
Tess of the D'Urber- 

villes. 

JuDE THE Obscure. 
• * 1 1 ^ 

"co^Jniform 'Edition. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 
*c "» ''^t''*i ^^ 5*^ P^"" volume. 

C C < 1 o c < 

Life's (Little Ironies. Tales. Post Svo, Cloth, Orna- 
te c meiv^ali $1 25. 
i^A.GROti' OF Noble Dames. Illustrated. i2mo, Cloth, 

'^•^'^ Orfi?ns,o|ital, $1 25. 

' I'cLLo^vrSTbWNSMEN. 32mo, Cloth, 35 cents. 



The Hand 

BEKTA. 

A Pair of Blue Eyes. 

The Mayor ok Caster- 
bridge. 

The Trumpet-Major. 

Under the Greenwood 
Tree. 

Return of the Native. 

The Well-Beloved. 



»'^««NE\V YORK AND LONDON: 
H^liPc^R & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 






Copyright, 1S98, by Harper & Brothers. 
^U rig-ht.f reser-ved. 



PREFACE 

OF the miscellaneous collection of verse 
that follows, only four pieces have 
been published, though many were written 
long ago, and others partly written. In 
some few cases the verses w^ere turned into 
prose and printed as such, it having been 
unanticipated at that time that they might 
see the light. 

Whenever an ancient and legitimate word 
of the district, for which there was no equiv- 
alent in received English, suggested itself 



PREFACE 

as the most iKitural, nearest, and often only 
expression of a thouglit, it has been made 
use of, on what seemed good grounds. 

The pieces are in a large degree dramatic 
or personative in conception ; and this even 
where they are not obviously so. 

The dates attached to some of the poems 

do not appl}^ to the rough sketches given in 

illustration, which have been recently made,. 

and, as may be surmised, are inserted for 

personal and local reasons rather than for 

their intrinsic qualities. 

T. H. 



September 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Temporary the All i 

Amabel 4 

Hai> 7 

" L\ Vision I Roamed" 9 

At a Bridal 11 

Postponement 13 

A Confession to a Friend in Trouble . . . . 15 

Neutral Tones 17 

vShe 19 

Her Initials 20 

Her DILEM^L\ 21 

Revulsion 25 

She, to Him, I 29 

n 31 

HI 33 

IV 35 

Ditty 37 

The Sergeant's Song 40 

Valenciennes 42 

San Sebastian 47 

The Stranger's Song 54 

The Burghers 56 

Leipzig 62 

vii 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Peasant's Confession 74 

The Alarm 86 

Her Death and After 97 

The Dance at the Phcenix 108 

The Casterbridge Captains 117 

A Sign-Seeker 120 

My Cicely 124 

Her Immortality 132 

The Ivy-Wife 138 

A Meeting with Dksi>air 140 

Unknowing 143 

Friends Beyond 145 

To Outer Nature 149 

Thoughts of Ph a . . , .► 152 

Middle- Age Enthusiasms 156 

Tn a Wood 158 

To A Lady 161 

To an Orphan Child 163 

Nature's Questioning 165 

The Impercipient 168 

At an Inn 173 

The Slow Nature 176 

In A Eweleaze near Weatherbury 179 

The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's 185 

Heiress and Architect 194 

The Two Men 200 

Lines 205 

"I Look into my Glass" 209 



WESSEX POEMS 




THE TEMPORARY THE ALL 



CHANGE and chancefulness in my flow- 
ering yoLithtime, 
Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen ; 
Wrought us fellowly, and despite divergence, 
Friends interblent us. 



THE TEMPORARY THE ALL 

" Cherish him can I while the true one forth- 
come — 
Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision ; 
Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded." 
So self-communed L 



Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter, 
Fair not fairest, good not best of her feather ; 
" Maiden meet," held I, " till arise my forefelt 
Wonder of women." 



Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring, 
Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in ; 
"Let such lodging be for a breath- while," 

thought I, 

" Soon a more seemly. 

" Then, high handiwork will I make my life- 
deed, 

Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time 
pending, 

Litermissive aim at the thing sufficeth." 
Thus I . . . But lo, me ! 

2 



THE TEMPO R A R Y THE ALL 

Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered 
straightway, 

Bettered not has Fate or my hand's achieving ; 

Sole the showance those of my onward earth- 
track — 

Never transcended ! 



AMABEL 

{MARKED her ruined hues, 
Her custom-straitened views, 
And asked, "Can there indwell 
My Amabel?" 

I looked upon her gown, 
Once rose, now earthen brown ; 
The change was like the knell 
Of Amabel. 



AMABEL 

Her step's mechanic ways 
Had lost the life of May's; 
Her laugh, once sweet in swell, 
Spoilt Amabel. 

I mused : *' Who sings the strain 
I sang ere warmth did wane ? 
Who thinks its numbers spell 
His Amabel?"— 

Knowing that, though Love cease, 
Love's race shows undecrease ; 
All find in dorp or dell 
An Amabel. 

— I felt that I could creep 
To some housetop, and weep, 
That Time the tyrant fell 
Ruled Amabel 1 

I said (the while I sighed 
That love like ours had died), 
" Fond things Lll no more tell 
To Amabel, 



AMABEL 

'' But leave her to her fate, 
And fling across the gate, 
' Till the Last Trump, farewell, 
O Amabel!'" 

1865. 




K-rv7'.7775^ 



HAP 

IF but some v^cngeful god would call to me 
From up the sky, and laugh : " Thou 
suffering thing, 
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, 

That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting !" 

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and 
die. 

Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited ; 
Half-eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I 

Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. 

7 



HAP 

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, 
And why unblooms the best hope ever 
sown ? 
— Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain. 
And dicing Time for gladness casts a 

moan. . . . 
These purblind Doomsters had as readily 
strown 
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain. 



1866. 



•'IN VISION I ROAMED" 

To 

IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament, 
So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed 
wan, 
As though with an awed sense of such ostent ; 
And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on 

In footless traverse through ghast heights of 

sky, 

To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome, 

Where stars the brightest here to darkness die : 

Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed 

Home ! 

9 



"IN VISION I ROAMED" 

And the sick grief that you were far away 
Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were 

near, 
Who might have been, set on some outstep 
sphere, 
Less than a Want to me, as day by day 
I lived unware, uncaring all that lay 

Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear. 



1866. 



AT A BRIDAL 

To 

WHEN you paced forth, to wait mater- 
nity, 
A dream of other offspring held my mind, 
Compounded of us twain as Love designed ; 
Rare forms, that corporate now will never be I 

Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree, 
And each thus found apart, of false desire, 
A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire 

As had fired ours could ever have mingled we; 



AT A BRIDAL 

And, grieved that lives so matched should 
miscompose, 
Each mourn the double waste ; and ques- 
tion dare 
To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows, 
Why those high -purposed children never 

were : 
What will she answer? That she does 
not care 
If the race all such sovereign types unknows. 



iS66. 



POSTPONEMENT 

SNOW-BOUND in woodland, a mournful 
word, 
Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird, 
Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard. 
Wearily waiting: — 

*' I planned her a nest in a leafless tree. 
But the passers eyed and twitted me, 
And said: 'How reckless a bird is he, 
Cheerily mating !' 

13 



POSTPONEMENT 

'' Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide, 
In lewth of leaves to throne her bride; 
But alas ! her love for me waned and died, 
Wearily waiting. 

" Ah, had I been like some I see, 
Born to an evergreen nesting-tree, 
None had eyed and twitted me. 
Cheerily mating !" 



1866. 



A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN 
TROUBLE 

YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel 
them less 
Here, far away, than when I tarried near; 
I even smile old smiles — with listlessness — 
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries 
mere. 

A thought too strange to house within my 
brain 
Haunting its outer precincts I discern : 
— That I zvill not sJioio zeal again to learn 
Your griefs, and, sharing them, reneiv my 
pain. . . . 



TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE 

It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer 
That shapes its lawless figure on the main, 
And each new impulse tends to make outflee 
The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here; 
Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be 
Than that, though banned, such instinct was 
in me! 



[866. 



NEUTRAL TONES 

WE stood by a pond that winter day, 
And the sun was white, as though 
chidden of God, 
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod, 
— They had fallen from an ash, and were 
gray. 

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove 
Over tedious riddles solved years ago ; 
And some words played between us to and 
fro— 

On which lost the more by our love. 
H 17 



NEUTRAL TONES 

The smile on your mouth was the deadest 

thing 
Alive enough to have strength to die ; 
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby 
Like an ominous bird a-wing. . . . 

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, 
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me 
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, 
And a pond edged with grayish leaves. 



1867. 




SHE 

AT HIS FUNERAL 

THEY bear him to his resting-place — 
In slow procession sweeping by; 
I follow at a stranger's space ; 

His kindred they, his sweetheart I. 
Unchanged my gown of garish dye, 

Though sable-sad is their attire ; 
But they stand round with griefless eye, 
Whilst my regret consumes like fire! 



[87-. 



19 



4-i^\.- 




HER INITIALS 

UPON a poet's page I wrote 
Of old two letters of her name ; 
Part seemed she of the effulgent thought 
Whence that high singer's rapture came. 
— When now I turn the leaf the same 

Immortal light illumes the lay 
But from the letters of her name 
The radiance has died away. 



1869 



20 



HER DILEMMA 

(IN CHURCH) 

THE two were silent in a sunless church, 
Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving- 
stones, 
And wasted carvings passed antique research ; 
And nothing broke the clock's dull mono- 
tones. 

Leaning against a wormy poppy-head, 

So wan and worn that he could scarcely 
stand, 

21 



HER DlLf:MMA 

— For he was soon to die, — he softly said, 
" Tell me you love me !" — holding hard her 
hand. 

She would have given a world to breathe 
'* yes " truly, 
So much his life seemed hanging on her 
mind, 
And hence she lied, her heart persuaded 
throughly, 
'Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind. 

But the sad need thereof, his nearing death. 
So mocked humanity that she shamed to 
prize 

A world conditioned thus, or care for breath 
Where Nature such dilemmas could devise. 



1866. 



REVULSION 

THOUGH I waste watches framing words 
to fetter 
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss, 
Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere 
better 
To fail obtaining wliom one fails to miss. 

For winning love we win the risk of losing, 
And losing love is as one's life were riven ; 

It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using 
To cede what was superfluously given. 

25 



REVULSION 

Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling 
That devastates the love-worn wooer's frame, 

The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling 
That agonizes disappointed aim ! 

So may I live no junctive law fulfilling, 
And my heart's table bear no woman's 
name. 



1866. 



i 



SHE, TO HIM 



WHEN you shall see me lined by tool 
of Time, 
My lauded beauties carried off from me. 
My eyes no longer stars as in their prime, 
My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free ; 

When in your being heart concedes to mind. 
And judgment, though you scarce its proc- 
ess know. 
Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined, 
And you are irked that they have withered 
so : 

29 



SHE, TO HIM 

Remembering that with me Hes not the blame, 
That Sportsman Time but rears his brood 
to kill, 
Knowing me in my soul the very same — 
One who would die to spare you touch of 
ill!— 
Will you not grant to old affection's claim 
The hand of friendship down Life's sunless 



[866. 



SHE, TO HIM 
II 

PERHAPS, long hence, when I have 
passed away, 
Some other's feature, accent, thought like 
mine, 
Will carry you back to what I used to say, 
And bring some memory of your love's 
decline. 

Then you may pause awhile and think, " Poor 
jade I" 
And yield a sigh to me — as gift benign. 
Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid 

To one who could to you her all resign — 
31 



SHE, TO HIM 

And thus reflecting, you will never see 
That your thin thought, in two small words 
conveyed, 
Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me, 
But the Whole Life wherein my part was 
played ; 
And you amid its fitful masquerade 

A Thought — as I in yours but seem to be. 



:866. 



SHE, TO HIM 
111 

I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will! 
And Death shall choose me with a won- 
dering eye 
That he did not discern and domicile 

One his by right ever since that last Good- 
bye ! 

I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime 
Of manhood who deal gently with me here ; 

Amid the happy people of my time 

Who work their love's fulfilment, I appear 



SHE, TO H IiM 

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point, 
True to the wind that kissed ere canker 
came ; 
Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint 
The mind from memory, and make Life all 
aim, 

My old dexterities of hue quite gone, 
And nothing left for Love to look upon. 



1866. 



SHE, TO HIM 

IV 

THIS love puts all humanity from me ; 
I can but maledict her, pray her dead. 
For giving love and getting love of thee — 
Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed ! 

How much I love I know not, life not known, 
Save as some unit I would add love by ; 

But this I know, my being is but thine own — 
Fused from its separateness by ecstasy. 

35 



SHE, TO HIM 

And thus I grasp thy ampUtudes, of her 
Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regard- 
ing eyes ; 

Canst thou then hate me as an envier 

Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize? 

Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier 

The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise. 



1866. 



DITTY 

(E. L. G.) 

BENEATH a knap where flown 
Nestlings play, 
W^ithin walls of weathered stone, 

Far away 
From the files of formal houses, 
By the bough the firstling browses. 
Lives a Sweet : no merchants meet, 
No man barters, no man sells 
Where she dwells. 
37 



DITTY 

Upon that fabric fair 

" Here is she !" 
Seems written everywhere 

Unto me. 
But to friends and noddincf neighbors, 
Fellow wights in lot and labors, 
Who descry the times as I, 
No such lucid legend tells 

Where she dwells. 

Should I lapse to what I was 

In days by — 
(Such cannot be, but because 

Some loves die 
Let me feign it) — none would notice 
That where she I know by rote is 
Spread a strange and withering change, 
Like a drying of the wells 

Where she dwells. 

To feel I might have kissed — 

Loved as true — 
Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed 

My life through, 

3S 



D I T T Y 

Had I never wandered near her, 
Is a smart severe — severer 
In the thought that she is nought, 
Even as I, beyond the dells 
Where she dwells. 

And Devotion droops her glance 

To recall 
What bond-servants of Chance 

We are all. 
I but found her in that, going 
On my errant path unknowing, 
I did not out-skirt the spot 
That no spot on earth excels — 

Where she dwells ! 

1870. 




^ 



THE SERGEANT'S SONG 

(1803) 

WHEN Lawyers strive to heal a breach, 
And Parsons practise what they 
preach ; 
Then Little Boney he'll pounce down, 
And march his men on London town ! 
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum, 
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay I 



When Justices hold equal scales, 
And Rogues are only found in jails; 
40 



THE SARGEANT'S SONG 

Then Little Boney he'll pounce down, 
And march his men on London town ! 
RoUicum-rorum, etc. 

When Rich Men find their w^ealth a curse, 
And fill therewith the Poor Man's purse ; 
Then Little Boney he'll pounce down, 
And march his men on London town ! 
Rollicum-rorum, etc. 

When Husbands with their Wives agree, 
And Maids won't wed from modesty ; 
Then Little Boney he'll pounce down, 
And march his men on London town ! 
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum, 
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay ! 

1S78. 

Published in ''The Tninipet-Major,'" 1880. 




^r^"^ 



VALENCIENNES 

(1793) 

By Corporal Tullidge. See "The Triimpet-Major'^ 
In Memory of S. C. (Pensioner). Died 184- 

WE trenched, we trumpeted and drum- 
med, 
And from our mortars tons of iron hummed 
Ath'art the ditch, the month we bombed 
The Town o' Valencieen. 
42 



VALENCIENNES 

'Twas in the June o' Ninety-dree 
(The Duke o' Yark our then Commander 
been) 
The German Legion, Guards, and we 
Laid siege to Valencieen. 



This was the first time in the war 
That French and EngHsh spilled each other's 
gore; 
— God knows what year will end the roar 
Begun at Valencieen ! 



'Twas said that we'd no business there 
A-topperen the French for disagreen ; 
However, that's not my affair — 
We were at Valencieen. 



Such snocks and slats, since war began 
Never knew raw recruit or veteran : 
Stone-deaf therence went many a man 
Who served at Valencieen. 

43 



VALENCIENNES 

Into the streets, ath'art the sky, 
A hundred thousand balls and bombs were 
flecn ; 
And harmless townsfolk fell to die 
Each hour at Valenciecn ! 



And, sweaten wi' the bombardiers, 
A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears 
— 'Twas nigh the end of hopes and fears 
For me at Valencieen ! 



They bore my wownded frame to camp, 
And shut my gapen skull, and washed en 
clean. 
And jined en wi' a zilver clamp 
Thik night at Valenciecn. 



*' We've fetched en back to quick from 
dead ; 
But never more on earth while rose is red 
Will drum rouse Corpel !" Doctor said 
O' me at Valencieen. 

44 



VALENCIENNES 

'Twer true. No voice o' friend or foe 
Can reach me now, or any liven been ; 
And little have I power to know 
Since then at Valenciecn ! 



I never hear the zummer hums 
O' bees ; and don't know when the cuckoo 
comes ; 
But night and day I hear the bombs 
We threw at Valenciecn. . . . 



As for the Duke o' Yark in war, 
There be some volk whose judgment o' en is 
mean ; 
But this I say — 'a was not far 

From great at Valenciecn. 

O' wild wet nights, when all seems sad. 
My wownds come back, as though new 
wownds I'd had ; 
But yet — at times I'm sort o' glad 
I fout at Valenciecn. 

45 



VALENCIENNES 

Well: Heaven wi' its jasper halls 
Is now the on'y Town I care to be in. . . . 
Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls 
As we did Valencieen ! 

1878-1897. 



I 



SAN SEBASTIAN 

(.August 1 8 13) 
With Thoughts of Sergeant M (Pensioner), 

WHO DIED 185— 

WHY, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel 
Way, 
As though at home there were spectres 

rife? 
From first to last 'twas a proud career! 
And your sunny years with a gracious wife 
Have brought you a daughter dear. 
47 



SAN SEBASTIAN 

" I watched her to-day ; a more comely maid, 
As she danced in her mushn bowed witii blue, 
Round a Hintock maypole never gayed." 
— '' Aye, aye ; I watched her this day, too. 
As it happens," the Sergeant said. 

*' My daughter is now," he again began, 
"Of just such an age as one I knew 
When we of the Line, in the Foot-Guard van. 
On an August morning — a chosen few — 
Stormed San Sebastian. 

" She's a score less three ; so about was s/ie — 
The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days. . . . 
You may prate of your prowess in lusty times. 
But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays, 
And see too well your crimes ! 

" We'd stormed it at night, by the vlanker-light 
Of burning towers, and the mortar's boom : 
We'd topped the breach but had failed to stay, 
For our files were misled by the baffling gloom ; 
And we said we'd storm by day. 
48 



SAN SEBASTIAN 

" So, out of the trenches, with features set. 
On that hot, still morning, in measured pace, 
Our column climbed ; climbed higher yet, 
Past the fauss'bray, scarp, up the curtain-face, 
And along the parapet. 

" From the batteried hornwork the cannoneers 
Hove crashing balls of iron fire ; 
On the shaking gap mount the volunteers 
In files, and as they mount expire 
Amid curses, groans, and cheers. 

'' Five hours did we storm, five hours re-form, 
As Death cooled those hot blood pricked on ; 
Till our cause was helped by a woe within : 
They swayed from the summit we'd leapt 
upon, 
And madly we entered in. 

** On end for plunder, 'mid rain and thunder 
That burst with the lull of our cannonade, 
We vamped the streets in the stifling air — 
Our hunger unsoothed, our thirst unstayed — 
And ransacked the buildings there. 
51 



SAN S E 1] A S T I A N 

"Down the stony steps of the house -fronts 

white 
We rolled rich puncheons of Spanish grape, 
Till at length, with the fire of the wine alight, 
I saw at a doorway a fair fresh shape — 
A woman, a sylph, or sprite. 

" Afeard she fled, and with heated head 

I pursued to the chamber she called her 

own ; 
— When might is right no qualms deter, 
And having her helpless and alone 
I wreaked my lust on her. 

*' She raised her beseeching eyes to me, 
And I heard the words of prayer she sent 
In her own soft language. . . . Seemingly 
I copied those eyes for my punishment 
In begetting the girl you see ! 

"So, to-day I stand with a God-set brand 
Like Cain's, when he wandered from kindred's 
ken. . . . 

52 



SAN SEBASTIAN 

I served through the war that made Europe 

free ; 
I wived me in peace-year. But, hid from men, 
I bear that mark on me. 

"And I nightly stray on the Ivel Way 
As though at home there were spectres rife ; 
I delight me not in my proud career ; 
And 'tis coals of fire that a gracious wife 
Should have brought me a daughter 
dear !" 



THE STRANGER'S SONG 

{As stmg by Mr. Charles Charringtox in the play of 
* ' The Three Wayfarers " ) 

OMY trade it is the rarest one, 
Simple shepherds all — 
My trade is a sight to see ; 
For my customers I tie, and take 'em up on 
high, 
And waft 'em to a far countree ! 

My tools are but common ones, 

Simple shepherds all — 

54 



THE STRANGERS SONG 

My tools are no sight to see : 
A little hempen string, and a post whereon 
to swing, 
Are implements enough for me ! 

To-morrow is my working day, 

Simple shepherds all — 
To-morrow is a working day for me : 
For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad 
who did it ta'en. 
And on his soul may God ha' mer-cy ! 

Printed in ''The Three Strangers,'' 1883. 



'l!*'i^i^?^ 



>r^AM- 






ii 



IC'n. 






sf"- ^^ 







^. 



.& 




THE BURGHERS 

(1 7-) 

THE sun had wheeled from Grey's to 
Dammer's Crest, 
And still I mused on that Thing imminent : 
At length I sought the High -street to the 
West. 

56 



THE BURGHERS 

The level flare raked pane and pediment 
And my wrecked face, and shaped my near- 

ing friend 
Like one of those the Furnace held unshent. 

" I've news concerning her," he said. ''Attend. 
They fly to-night at the late moon's first gleam: 
Watch with thy steel : two righteous thrusts 
will end 

" Her shameless visions and his passioned 

dream. 
I'll watch with thee, to testify thy wrong — 
To aid, maybe — Law consecrates the scheme.'* 

I started, and we paced the flags along 
Till I replied : " Since it has come to this 
I'll do it ! But alone. I can be strong." 

Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom's 
mild hiss 

Reigned sole, unduUed by whirr of mer- 
chandise, 

From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is, 
57 



THE BURGHERS 

I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd'path 

Rise, 
And stood beneath the wall. Eleven strokes 

went, 
And to the door they came, contrariwise. 

And met in clasp so close I had but bent 
My lifted blade upon them to have let 
Their two souls loose upon the firmament. 

But something held my arm. "A moment 

yet 
As pray-time ere you wantons die !" I said ; 
And then they saw me. Swift her gaze was 

set 

With eye and cry of love illimited 
Upon her Heart-king. Never upon me 
Had she thrown look of love so thorough- 
sped ! . . . 

At once she flung her faint form shieldingly 
On his, against the vengeance of my vows ; 
The which o'erruling, her shape shielded he. 
58 



THE BURGHERS 

Blanked by such love, I stood as in a 

drowse, 
And the slow moon edged from the upland 

nigh, 
My sad thoughts moving thuswise : " I may 

house 



" And I may husband her, yet what am I 
But licensed tyrant to this bonded pair? 
Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by." . . . 



Hurling my iron to the bushes there, 

I bade them stay. And, as if brain and 

breast 
Were passive, they walked with me to the 

stair. 



Inside the house none watched ; and on we 

prest 
Before a mirror, in whose gleam I read 
Her beauty, his, — and mine own mien un- 

blest ; 

59 



THE BURGHERS 

Till at her room I turned. " Madam," I 

said, 
" Have you the wherewithal for this? Pray 

speak. 
Love fills no cupboard. You'll need daily 

bread." 



" We've nothing, sire," said she, ** and noth- 
ing seek. 

'Twere base in me to rob my lord unware ; 

Our hands will earn a pittance week by 
week." 



And next I saw she'd piled her raiment rare 
Within the garde-robes, and her household 

purse, 
Her jewels, and least lace of personal wear ; 



And stood in homespun. Now grown wholly 

hers, 
I handed her the gold, her jewels all, 
And him the choicest of her robes diverse. 
60 



THE BURGHERS 

*' I'll take you to the doorway in the wall, 
And then adieu," I to them. " Friends, with- 
draw." 
They did so ; and she went — beyond recall. 

And as I paused beneath the arch I saw 
Their moonlit figures — slow, as in surprise — 
Descend the slope, and vanish on the haw. 

" ' Fool,' some will say," I thought. " But 

who is wise. 
Save God alone, to weigh my reasons why?" 
— "Hast thou struck home?" came with the 

boughs' night-sighs. 

It was my friend. '' I have struck well. 

They fly, 
But carry wounds that none can cicatrize." 
— ''Not mortal?" said he. "Lingering — 

worse," said I. 



LEIPZIG 

(1813) 

Scene : The Master- tradesmen' s Parlor at the Old Ship InUy 
Casterbridge. Evening. 

OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap— 
A German said to be — 
Why let your pipe die on your lap, 
Your eyes blink absently?" — 

— " Ah ! . . . Well, I had thought till my cheek 
was wet 
Of my mother — her voice and mien 
When she used to sing and pirouette, 
And touse the tambourine 
62 



LEIPZIG 

" To the march that yon street-fiddler plies ; 

She told me 'twas the same 
She'd heard from the trumpets, when the 
Allies 

Her city overcame. 

" My father was one of the German Hussars, 
My mother of Leipzig ; but he, 

Long quartered here, fetched her at close of 
the wars, 
And a Wessex lad reared me. 

''And as I grew up, again and again 
She'd tell, after trilling that air. 

Of her youth, and the battles on Leipzig 
plain 
And of all that was suffered there ! . . . 

" — 'Twas a time of alarms. Three Chiefs-at- 
arms 
Combined them to crush One, 
And by numbers' might, for in equal fight 
He stood the matched of none. 
(^3 



LEIPZIG 

** Carl Schwartzenburg was of the plot, 
And Bliicher, prompt and prow, 

And Jean the Crown-Prince Bernadotte: 
Buonaparte was the foe. 

" City and plain had felt his reign 
From the North to the Middle Sea, 

And he'd now sat down in the noble town 
Of the King of Saxony. 

" October's deep dew its wet gossamer threw 
Upon Leipzig's lawns, leaf-strewn. 

Where lately each fair avenue 

Wrought shade for summer noon. 

** To westward two dull rivers crept 
Through miles of marsh and slough, 

Whereover a streak of whiteness swept — 
The Bridge of Lindenau. 

*' Hard by, in the City, the One, care-crossed, 
Gloomed over his shrunken power ; 

And without the walls the hemming host 
Waxed denser every hour. 
64 



L E I P Z I (; 

"■ He had speech that niglit on the morrow's 
designs 
With his chiefs by the bivouac fire, 
While the belt of flames from the enemy's 
lines 
Flared nigher him yet and nigher. 

'* Three sky -lights then from the girdling 
trine 

Told, ' Ready !' As they rose 
Their flashes seemed his Judgment-Sign 

For bleeding Europe's woes. 

" 'Twas seen how the French watch-fires that 
night 
Glowed still and steadily; 
And the Three rejoiced, for they read in the 
sight 
That the One disdained to flee. . . . 

" — Five hundred guns began the affray 

On next day morn at nine ; 
Such mad and mangling cannon-play 

Had never torn human line. 
E 65 



LEIPZIG 

'* Around the town three battles beat, 

Contracting like a gin ; 
As nearer marched the million feet 

Of columns closing in. 

''The first battle nighed on the low Southern 
side ; 
The second by the Western way ; 
The nearing of the third on the North was 
heard : 
— The French held all at bay. 

*' Against the first band did the Emperor 
stand ; 
Against the second stood Ney; 
Marmont against the third gave the order- 
word : 
— Thus raged it throughout the day. 

'' Fifty thousand sturdy souls on those trampled 
plains and knolls, 
Who met the dawn hopefully, 
And were lotted their shares in a quarrel not 
theirs, 
Dropt then in their agony. 
66 







^^n' 



te> 



^.^JL^^iM: 



LEirZlG 

" * O,' the old folks said, ' ye Preachers stern ! 

O so-called Christian time ! 
When will men's swords to ploughshares 
turn ? 

When come the promised prime ?' . . . 

" — The clash of horse and man which that 
day began, 

Closed not as evening wore ; 
And the morrow's armies, rear and van, 

Still mustered more and more. 

"From the City towers the Confederate 
Powers 

Were eyed in glittering lines, 
And up from the vast a murmuring passed 

As from a wood of pines. 

" ' 'Tis well to cover a feeble skill 

By numbers I' scoffed He; 
' But give me a third of their strength, I'd 
fill 
Half Hell with their soldiery!' 
69 



LEIPZIG 

** All that day raged the war they waged, 
And again dumb night held reign, 

Save that ever upspread from the dark death- 
bed 
A miles-wide pant of pain. 



" Hard had striven brave Ney, the true 
Bertrand, 

Victor, and Augereau, 
Bold Poniatowski, and Lauriston, 

To stay their overthrow ; 



** But, as in the dream of one sick to death 
There comes a narrowing room 

That pens him, body and limbs and breath, 
To wait a hideous doom. 



" So to Napoleon, in the hush 
That held the town and towers 

Through these dire nights, a creeping crush 
Seemed inborne with the hours. 
70 



LEIPZIG 

*' One road to the rearward, and but one, 

Did fitful Chance allow ; 
'Twas where the Pleiss' and Elster run — 

The Bridge of Lindenau. 



** The nineteenth dawned. Down street and 
Platz 

The wasted French sank back. 
Stretching long lines across the Flats 

And on the bridge-way track ; 



*^ When there surged on the sky an earthen 
wave. 

And stones, and men, as though 
Some rebel churchyard crew updrave 

Their sepulchres from below. 



*' To Heaven is blown Bridge Lindenau 
Wrecked regiments reel therefrom ; 

And rank and file in masses plough 
The sullen Elster-Strom. 
71 



LEIPZIG 

" A gulf was Lindenau ; and dead 
Were fifties, hundreds, tens ; 

And every current rippled red 
With Marshal's blood and men's. 



" The smart Macdonald swam therein, 
And barely won the verge ; 

Bold Poniatowski plunged him in 
Never to re-emerge. 



"Then stayed the strife. The remnants 
wound 

Their Rhineward way pell-mell ; 
And thus did Leipzig City sound 

An Empire's passing bell ; 



" While in cavalcade, with band and blade, 
Came Marshals, Princes, Kings ; 

And the town was theirs. . . . Ay, as simple 
maid. 
My mother saw these things ! 



LEI PZIG 

"And whenever those notes in the street 
begin, 

I recall her, and that far scene, 
And her acting of how the Allies marched in. 

And her touse of the tambourine!" 




THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION 

" Si le marechal Grouchy avail ete rejoint par I'officier que 
ISJapoleon lui avait expedie la veille a dix heures du soir, 
toute question eut disparu. Mais cet officier n'etait point 
parvenu a sa destination, ainsi que le marechal n'a cesse de 
I'affirraer toute sa vie, et il faut Pen croire, car autrement il 
n'aurait eu aucune raison pour hesiter. Cet officier avait- 
il ete pris? avait-il passe a I'ennemi ? C'est ce qu'on a tou- 
jours ignore." 

— Thiers : Histotre de V Empire. " Waterloo." 

GOOD Father ! . . . 'Twas an eve in 
middle June, 
And war was waged anew 
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn 
Men's bones all Europe through. 
74 



THE PEASANTS CONFESSION 

Three nights ere this, with columned corps 
he'd crossed 

The Sambre at Charleroi, 
To move on Brussels, where the English host 

Dallied in Pare and Bois. 



The yestertide we'd heard the gloomy gun 
Growl through the long-sunned day 

From Quatre-Bras and Ligny ; till the dun 
Twilight suppressed the fray ; 

Albeit therein — as lated tongues bespoke — 
Brunswick's high heart was drained, 

And Prussia's Line and Landwehr, though 
unbroke, 
Stood cornered and constrained. 



And at next noon-time Grouchy slowly passed 

With thirty thousand men : 
We hoped thenceforth no army, small or 
vast. 
Would trouble us again. 
75 



THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION 

My hut lay deeply in a vale recessed, 
And never a soul seemed nigh 

When, reassured at length, we went to rest- 
My children, wife, and I. 



But what was this that broke our humble 
ease ? 

What noise, above the rain. 
Above the dripping of the poplar trees 

That smote along the pane ? 

— A call of mastery, bidding me arise, 

Compelled me to the door, 
At which a horseman stood in martial 
guise — 

Splashed — sweating from every pore. 



Had I seen Grouchy? Yes? Which track 
took he ? 
Could I lead thither on? — 
Fulfilment would ensure gold pieces three, 
Perchance more gifts anon. 
76 



THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION 

*' I bear the Emperor's mandate," then he 
said, 

'' Charging the Marshal straight 
To strike between the double host ahead 

Ere they co-operate, 



"' Engaging Bliicher till the Emperor put 

Lord Wellington to flight, 
And next the Prussians. This to set afoot 

Is my emprise to-night." 

I joined him in the mist ; but, pausing, sought 

To estimate his say. 
Grouchy had made for Wavre ; and yet, on 
thought, 

I did not lead that way. 



I mused : '' If Grouchy thus instructed be, 

The clash comes sheer hereon ; 
My farm is stript. While, as for pieces 
three. 
Money the French have none, 
77 



THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION 

'' Grouchy unwarned, moreo'er, the English 
win, 

And mine is left to me — 
They buy, not borrow." — Hence did I begin 

To lead him treacherously. 

By Joidoigne, near to east, as we ondrew, 

Dawn pierced the humid air ; 
And eastward faced I with him, though I 
knew 

Never marched Grouchy there. 



Near Ottignies we passed, across the Dyle 

(Lim'lette left far aside), 
And thence direct toward Pervez and Noville 

Through green grain, till he cried : 

" I doubt thy conduct, man ! no track is 
here 
I doubt thy gaged word !'* 
Thereat he scowled on me, and pranced me 
near, 
And pricked me with his sword. 
78 



THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION 

" Nay, Captain, hold ' We skirt, not trace 
the course 

Of Groucliy," said I then : 
" As we go, yonder went he, with his force 

Of thirty thousand men" 

— At length noon nighed , when west, from 
Saint-John's- Mound, 
A hoarse artillery boomed, 
And from Saint - Lambert's upland, chapel- 
crowned, 
The Prussian squadrons loomed. 

Then to the wayless wet gray ground he 
leapt ; 

" My mission fails I" he cried ; 
" Too late for Grouch}^ now to intercept, 

For, peasant, you have lied !" 

He turned to pistol me. I sprang, and drew 

The sabre from his flank. 
And 'twixt his nape and shoulder, ere he 
knew, 
I struck, and dead he sank. 
F 8i 



THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION 

I hid him deep in nodding rye and oat — 
His shroud green stalks and loam ; 

His requiem the corn-blade's husky note — 
And then I hastened home. . . . 



— Two armies writhe in coils of red and 
blue, 

And brass and iron clang 
From Goumont, past the front of Waterloo^ 

To Paplotte and Smohain. 



The Guard Imperial wavered on the height;. 
The Emperor's face grew glum ; 

" I sent," he said, '' to Grouchy yesternight, 
And yet he does not come !" 



'Twas then, Good Father, that the French 
espied, 
Streaking the summer land, 
The men of Blucher. But the Emperor 
cried, 
" Grouchy is now at hand !" 
82 



< 



THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION 

And meanwhile Vand'leur, Vivian, Maitland, 
Kempt, 
Met d'Erlon, Friant, Ney ; 
But Grouchy — mis-sent, blamed, yet blame- 
exempt — 
Grouchy was far away. 

By even, slain or struck, Michel the strong, 

Bold Travers, Dnop, Delord, 
Smart Guyot, Reil-le, I'Heriter, Friant. 

Scattered that champaign o'er. 

Fallen likewise wronged Duhesme, and skilled 
Lobau 
Did that red sunset see ; 
Colbert, Legros, Blancard ! . . . And of the 
foe 
Picton and Ponsonby ; 

With Gordon, Canning, Blackman, Ompteda, 
L' Estrange, Delancey, Packe, 

Grose, D'Oyly, Stables, Morice, Howard, Hay, 
Von Schwerin, Watzdorf, Boek, 
83 



THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION 

Smith, Plielips, Fuller, Lind, and Battersby, 
And hosts of ranksmen round . . . 

Memorials linger yet to speak to thee 
Of those that bit the ground ! 



The Guards' last column yielded ; dykes of 
dead 
Lay between vale and ridge, 
As, thinned yet closing, faint yet fierce, they 
sped 
In packs to Genappe Bridge. 



Safe was my stock ; my capple cow unslain ; 

Intact each cock and hen ; 
But Grouchy far at Wavre all day had lain, 

And thirty thousand men. 



O Saints, had I but lost my earing corn 

And saved the cause once prized I 
O Saints, why such false witness had I borne 
When late I'd sympathized ! . . . 
84 



THE PEASANTS C O N 1 E S S I O N 

So now, being old, my children eye askance 

My slowly dwindling store, 
And crave my mite ; till, worn with tarriance, 

I care for life no more. 

To Almighty God henceforth I stand con- 
fessed. 

And Virgin-Saint Marie ; 
O Michael, John, and Holy Ones in rest, 

Entreat the Lord for me ! 



^Br 




n 



THE ALARM 

(1S03) 

See " T/ie Trumpet- Major-" 

[n Memory of one of the Writer's Family who was a Volunteer 
DURING the War with Napoleon 



I 



N a ferny byway 

Near the great South -Wessex 
Highway, 
A homestead raised its breakfast - smoke 
aloft ; 
The dew-damps still lay stcamless, for the sun 
had made no sky-way, 

And twilight cloaked the croft. 
86 



THE ALARM 

'Twas hard to realize on 
This snug side the mute horizon 
That beyond it hostile armaments might 
steer, 
Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman 
weep with eyes on 

A harnessed Volunteer. 



In haste he'd flown there 
To his comely wife alone there, 
While marching south hard by, to still her 
fears, 
For she soon would be a mother, and few 
messengers were known there 
In these campaigning years. 



Twas time to be Good-bying, 
Since the assembly-hour was nighing 
In royal George's town at six that morn ; 
And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were 
ten good miles of hieing 
Ere ring of bugle-horn. 



THE ALARM 

" I've laid in food, Dear, 
And broached the spiced and brewed, 
Dear ; 
And if our July hope should antedate, 
Let the char-wench mount and gallop by the 
halterpath and wood, Dear, 

And fetch assistance straight. 

*' As for Buonaparte, forget him ; 
He's not like to land ! But let him, 
Those strike with aim who strike for wives 
and sons ! 
And the war-boats built to float him ; 'twere 
but w^anted to upset him 

A slat from Nelson's guns ! 



" But, to assure thee. 
And of creeping fears to cure thee, 
If he should be rumored anchoring in the 
Road, 
Drive with the nurse to Kingsbere ; and let 
nothing thence allure thee 

Till we've him safe-bestowed. 




br^'^-^^j^ifeil^l 



THE ALARM 

" Now, to turn to marching matters: — 
I've my knapsack, firelock, spatters, 
Crossbelts, priming -horn, stock, bay'net, 
blackball, clay. 
Pouch, magazine, flints, flint-box that at every 
quick-step clatters ; 

. . . My heart, Dear ; that must 
stay !" 

— With breathings broken 
Farewell was kissed unspoken. 
And they parted there as morning stroked 
the panes ; 
And the Volunteer went on, and turned, and 
twirled his glove for token. 

And took the coastward lanes. 



When above He'th Hills he found him. 
He saw, on gazing round him. 
The Barrow-Beacon burning — burning low. 
As if, perhaps, uplighted ever since he'd home- 
ward bound him : 

And it meant : Expect the Foe ! 
9t 



THE ALARM 

Leaving the byway, 
And following swift the highway, 
Car and chariot met he, faring fast inland ; 
"He's anchored, Soldier I" shouted some: 
" God save thee, marching thy way, 
Th'lt front him on the strand !" 



He slowed ; he stopped ; he paltered 
Awhile with self, and faltered, 
" Why courting misadventure shoreward 
roam ? 
To Molly, surely ! Seek the woods with her 
till times have altered ; 
Charity favors home. 



*' Else, my denying 

He would come she'll read as lying — 
Think the Barrow -Beacon must have met 
my eyes — 
That my words were not unwareness, but 
deceit of her, while trying 
My life to jeopardize. 
92 



THE ALARM 

*' At home is stocked provision, 
And to-night, without suspicion, 
We might bear it with us to a covert 
near ; 
Such sin, to save a childing wife, would earn 
it Christ's remission, 

Though none forgive it here !" 



While thus he, thinking, 
A little bird, quick drinking 
Among the crowfoot tufts the river 
bore, 
Was tangled in their stringy arms, and flut- 
tered, well-nigh sinking. 

Near him, upon the moor. 

He stepped in, reached, and seized it, 
And, preening, had released it 
But that a thought of Holy Writ oc- 
curred. 
And Signs Divine ere battle, till it seemed 
him Heaven had pleased it 

As guide to send the bird. 
93 



THE ALARM 

" O Lord, direct me ! . . . 
Doth Duty now expect me 
To march a-coast, or guard my weak ones 
near? 
Give this bird a flight according, that I thence 
know to elect me 

The southward or the rear." 



He loosed his clasp ; when, rising. 
The bird — as if surmising — 
Bore due to southward, crossing by the 
Froom, 
And Durnover Great-Field and Fort, the sol- 
dier clear advising — 

Prompted he wist by Whom. 

Then on he panted 
By grim Mai-Don, and slanted 
Up the steep Ridge- way, hearkening be- 
twixt whiles; 
Till, nearing coast and harbor, he beheld the 
shore-line planted 

With Foot and Horse for miles. 
94 



THE ALARM 

Mistrusting not the omen, 
He gained the beach, where Yeo- 
men, 
Militia, Fencibles, and Pikemen bold. 
With Regulars in thousands, were enmassed 
to meet the Foemen, 

Whose fleet had not yet shoaled. 



Captain and Colonel, 
Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal, 
Were there, of neighbor- natives, Michel, 
Smith, 
Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham,, 
roused by the hued nocturnal 

Swoop on their land and kith. 



But Buonaparte still tarried ; 
His project had miscarried; 
At the last hour, equipped for victory, 
The fleet had paused ; his subtle combinations 
had been parried 

By British strategy. 
95 



THE ALARM 

Homeward returning 
Anon, no beacons burning, 
No alarms, the Volunteer, in modest bliss, 
Te Deum sang with wife and friends: "We 
praise Thee, Lord, discerning 

That Thou hast helped in this !" 



1 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

TWAS a death -bed summons, and forth 
I went 
By the way of the Western Wall, so drear 
On that winter night, and sought a gate — 
The home, by Fate, 
Of one I had long held dear. 

And there, as I paused by her tenement. 
And the trees shed on me their rime and 

hoar, 
I thought of the man who had left her lone — 
Him who made her his own 
When I loved her, long before. 
G 97 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

The rooms within had the piteous shine 
That home-things wear which the housewife 

miss ; 
From the stairway floated the rise and fall 
Of an infant's call, 
Whose birth had brought her to this. 

Her life was the price she would pay for that 

whine — 
For a child by the man she did not love. 
*• But let that rest forever," I said. 
And bent my tread 
To the chamber up above. 

She took my hand in her thin white own, 
And smiled her thanks — though nigh too 

weak — 
And made them a sign to leave us there ; 
Then faltered, ere 
She could bring herself to speak. 

*' 'Twas to see you before I go — he'll condone 
Such a natural thing now my time's not 
much — 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

When Death is so near it hustles hence 
All passioned sense 
Between woman and man as such ! 

*' My husband is absent. As heretofore 
The City detains him. But, in truth, 
He has not been kind. ... I will speak no 
blame, 

But — the child is lame ; 
O, I pray she may reach his ruth ! 

" Forgive past days — I can say no more — 
Maybe if we'd wedded you'd now repine ! . . . 
But I treated you ill. I was punished. Fare- 
well ! 

—Truth shall I tell? 
Would the child were yours and mine ! 

*' As a wife I was true. But, such my un- 
ease 
That, could I insert a deed back in Time, 
I'd make her yours, to secure your care ; 
And the scandal bear, 
And the penalty for the crime !" 
99 
L.ofC. 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

— When I had left, and the swinging trees 
Rang above me, as lauding her candid say, 
Another was I. Her words were enough : 
Came smooth, came rough, 
1 felt I could live my day. 

Next night she died ; and her obsequies 
In the Field of Tombs, by the Via re- 
nowned. 
Had her husband's heed. His tendance 
spent, 

I often went 
And pondered by her mound. 

All that year and the next year whiled. 
And I still went thitherward in the gloam ; 
But the Town forgot her and her nook. 
And her husband took 
Another Love to his home. 

And the rumor flew that the lame lone 

child 
Whom she wished for its safety child of 

mine, 

lOO 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

Was treated ill when offspring came 
Of the new-made dame, 
And marked a more vigorous line. 



A smarter grief within me wrought 
Than even at loss of her so dear; 
Dead the being whose soul my soul suffused, 
Her child ill-used, 
I helpless to interfere ! 

One eve as I stood at my spot of thought 
In the white-stoned Garth, brooding thus her 

wrong, 
Her husband neared ; and to shun his view 
By her hallowed mew 
I went from the tombs among 

To the Cirque of the Gladiators which 

faced — 
That haggard mark of Imperial Rome, 
Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime 
Of our Christian time : 
It was void, and I inward clomb. 
103 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

Scarce had night the sun's gold touch dis- 
placed 
From the vast Rotund and the neighboring 

dead 
When her husband followed ; bowed ; half- 
passed, 

With lip upcast ; 
Then, halting, sullenly said : 

" It is noised that you visit my first wife's 

tomb. 
Now, I gave her an honored name to bear 
While living, when dead. So I've claim to ask 
By what right you task 
My patience by vigiling there ? 

'* There's decency even in death, I assume ; 
Preserve it, sir, and keep away; 
For the mother of my first-born you 
Show mind undue ! 
— Sir, I've nothing more to say." 

A desperate stroke discerned I then — 
God pardon — or pardon not — the lie ; 
104 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

She had sighed that she wished (lest the 
child should pine 

Of slights) 'twere mine, 
So I said : " But the father I. 

*' That you thought it yours is the way of 

men ; 
But I won her troth long ere your day : 
You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me? 
'Twas in fealty. 
— Sir, I've nothing more to say, 

'* Save that, if you'll hand me my little maid, 
I'll take her, and rear her, and spare you toil. 
Think it more than a friendly act none can ; 
I'm a lonely man, 
While you've a large pot to boil. 

" If not, and you'll put it to ball or blade — 
To-night, to-morrow night, anywhen — 
I'll meet you here. . . . But think of it, 
And in season fit 
Let me hear from you again." 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

— Well, I went away, hoping ; but nought 1 

heard 
Of my stroke for the child, till there greeted 

me 
A little voice that one day came 
To my window-frame 
And babbled innocently: 

^' My father who's not my own, sends word 
I'm to stay here, sir, where I belong !" 
Next a writing came : " Since the child was 
the fruit 

Of your passions brute, 
Pray take her, to right a wrong." 

And I did. And I gave the child my 

love. 
And the child loved me, and estranged us 

none. 
But compunctions loomed ; for I'd harmed 
the dead 

By what I'd said 
For the good of the living one. 
1 06 



HER DEATH AND AFTER 

— Yet though, God wot, I am sinner enough, 
And unworthy the woman who drew me so. 
Perhaps this wrong for her darling's good 
She forgives, or would. 
If only she could know ! 








THE DANCE AT THE PHCENIX 

TO Jenny came a gentle youth 
From inland leazes lone ; 
His love was fresh as apple-blooth 

By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone. 
And duly he entreated her 
To be his tender minister, 

And call him aye her own. 



Fair Jenny's life had hardly been 

A life of modesty ; 
At Casterbridge experience keen 

Of many loves had she 

1 08 



THE DANCE AT THE PHCENIX 

From scarcely sixteen years above ; 
Among them sundry troopers of 
The King's-Own Cavalry. 

But each with charger, sword, and gun, 
Had bluffed the Biscay wave ; 

And Jenny prized her gentle one 
For all the love he gave. 

She vowed to be, if they were wed, 

His honest wife in heart and head 
From bride-ale hour to grave. 

Wedded they were. Her husband's trust 

In Jenny knew no bound, 
And Jenny kept her pure and just, 

Till even malice found 
No sin or sign of ill to be 
In one who walked so decently 

The duteous helpmate's round. 

Two sons were born, and bloomed to men, 
And roamed, and were as not : 

Alone was Jenny left again 

As ere her mind had sought 
109 



THE DANCE AT THE P H CE N I X 

A solace in domestic joys, 
And ere the vanished pair of boys 
Were sent to sun her cot. 

She numbered near on sixty years, 

And passed as elderly, 
When, in the street, with flush of fears, 

One day discovered she, 
From shine of swords and thump of drum, 
Her early loves from war had come, 

The King's-Own Cavalry. 

She turned aside, and bowed her head 

Anigh Saint Peter's door ; 
''Alas for chastened thoughts I" she said; 

" I'm faded now, and hoar. 
And yet those notes — they thriU me through. 
And those gay forms move me anew 

As in the years of yore!" . . . 

— 'Twas Christmas, and the Phoenix Inn 

Was lit with tapers tall. 
For thirty of the trooper men 

Had vowed to give a ball 
no 



THE DANCE AT THE PHCENIX 

As " Theirs " had done (fame handed down) 
When lying in the self-same town 
Ere Buonaparte's fall. 

That ni^ht the throbbing " Soldier's Joy," 
The measured tread and sway 

Of " Fancy-Lad " and " Maiden Coy," 
Reached Jenny as she lay 

Beside her spouse : till springtide blood 

Seemed scouring through her like a flood 
That whisked the years away. 

She rose, and rayed, and decked her head 

To hide her ringlets thin ; 
Upon her cap two bows of red 

She fixed with hasty pin ; 
Unheard descending to the street, 
She trod the flags with tune-led feet, 

And stood before the Inn. 

Save for the dancers', not a sound 

Disturbed the icy air ; 
No watchman on his midnight round 

Or traveller was there ; 
III 



THE DANCE AT THE PHGiNlX 

But over All-Saints', high and bright, 
Pulsed to the music Sirius white, 
The Wain by Bullstake Square. 

She knocked, but found her further stride 

Checked by a sergeant tall: 
"" Gay Granny, whence come you ?'* he cried ; 

'' This is a private ball." 
— "No one has more right here than me! 
Ere you were born, man," answered she, 

"I knew the regiment all!" 

**Take not the lady's visit ill!" 

Upspoke the steward free; 
** We lack sufificient partners still, 

So, prithee let her be!" 
They seized and whirled her 'mid the maze. 
And Jenny felt as in the days 

Of her immodesty. 

Hour chased each hour, and night advanced; 

She sped as shod with wings : 
Each time and every time she danced- 

Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings: 



THE DANCE AT THE PHCENIX 

They cheered her as she soared and 

swooped 
(She'd learnt ere art in dancing drooped 
From hops to slothful swings). 



The favorite Quick-step *' Speed the Plough " — 

(Cross hands, cast off, and wheel) — 
*' The Triumph," "Sylph," *' The Row-dow 
dow," 
Famed "Major Malley's Reel," 
" The Duke of York's," " The Fairy Dance," 
*' The Bridge of Lodi " (brought from 
France), 
She beat out, toe and heel. 



The "Fall of Paris " clanged its close, 
And Peter's chime told four. 

When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose 
To seek her silent door. 

They tiptoed in escorting her, 

Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur 
Should break her goodman's snore. 

H 113 



THE DANCE AT THE PHCENIX 

The fire that late had burnt fell slack 
When lone at last stood she; 

Her nine-and-fifty years came back; 
She sank upon her knee 

Beside the durn, and like a dart 

A something arrowed through her heart 
In shoots of agony. 



Their footsteps died as she leant there^ 

Lit by the morning star 
Hanging above the moorland, where 

The aged elm-rows are ; 
And, as o'ernight, from Pummery Ridge 
To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge 

No life stirred, near or far. 



Though inner mischief worked amain, 
She reached her husband's side ; 

Where, toil-weary, as he had lain 
Beneath the patchwork pied 

When yestereve she'd forthward crept^ 

And as unwitting, still he slept 
Who did in her confide. 
114 



THE DANCE AT THE PHCENIX 

A tear sprang as she turned and viewed 
His features free from guile ; 

She kissed hina long, as when, just wooed. 
She chose his domicile. 

Death menaced now ; yet less for life 

She wished than that she were the wife 
That she had been erstwhile. 



Time wore to six. Her husband rose 
And struck the steel and stone ; 

He glanced at Jenny, whose repose 
Seemed deeper than his own. 

With dumb dismay, on closer sight, 

He gathered sense that in the night, 
Or morn, her soul had flown. 

When told that some too mighty strain 

For one so many-yeared 
Had burst her bosom's master-vein, 

His doubts remained unstirred. 
His Jenny had not left his side 
Betwixt the eve and morning-tide: 

— The King's said not a word. 
115 



THE DANCE AT THE PHGENIX 

Well ! times are not as times were then, 

Nor fair ones half so free ; 
And truly they were martial men, 

The King's-Own Cavalry. 
And when they went from Casterbridge 
And vanished over Mellstock Ridge, 

'Twas saddest morn to see. 



^^'^. •■■• ..■••..-<.>•' 

-.^ v..% \^^f• 



fmS J0^ 




m 



1 












^>J6i 





' ill! 



THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS 

(KHYBER PASS, 1842) 
A Tradition of J. B. L , T. G. B , and J. L 

THREE captains went to Indian wars, 
And only one returned : 
Their mate of yore, he singly wore 
The laurels all had earned. 
117 



THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS 

At home he sought the ancient aisle 
Wherein, untrumped of fame, 

The three had sat in pupilage, 

And each had carved his name. 



The names, rough-hewn, of equal size. 
Stood on the panel still ; 

Unequal since. — '' 'Twas theirs to aim. 
Mine was it to fulfil!" 



— "Who saves his life shall lose it, 
friends !" 

Outspake the preacher then, 
Unweeting he his listener, who 

Looked at the names again. 



That he had come and they'd been 
stayed, 
'Twas but the chance of war : 
Another chance, and they'd sat here. 
And he had lain afar. 
ii8 



THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS 

Yet saw he something in the Hves 
Of those who'd ceased to Hve 

That rounded them with majesty 
Which Hving failed to give. 

Transcendent triumph in return 

No longer lit his brain ; 
Transcendence rayed the distant urn 

Where slept the fallen twain. 




A SIGN-SEEKER 

I MARK the months in Hveries dank and dry, 
The day-tides many-shaped and hued ; 
I see the nightfall shades subtrude, 
And hear the monotonous hours clang neg- 
ligently by. 



I view the evening bonfires of the sun 
On hills where morning rains have hissed ; 
The eyeless countenance of the mist 

Pallidly rising when the summer droughts 
are done. 

I20 



A SIGN-SEEKER 

I have seen the h'ghtning-blade, the leaping 
star, 
The caldrons of the sea in storm, 
Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm, 
And trodden where abysmal fires and snow- 
cones are. 

I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse, 

The coming of eccentric orbs; 

To mete the dust the sky absorbs. 
To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each 
planet dips. 

I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive ; 

Assemblies meet, and throb, and part ; 

Death's soothing finger, sorrow's smart ; 
■ — All the vast various moils that mean a 
world alive. 

But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense — 
Those sights of which old prophets tell. 
Those signs the general word so well. 

Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my 
watchings tense. 

121 



A SIGN-SEEKER 

In graveyard green, behind his monument 
To glimpse a phantom parent, friend, 
Wearing his smile, and " Not the end !" 

Outbreathing softly : that were blest enlighten- 
ment ; 

Or, if a dead Love's lips, whom dreams reveal 
When midnight imps of King Decay 
Delve sly to solve me back to clay. 

Should leave some print to prove her spirit- 
kisses real ; 

Or, when Earth's Frail lie bleeding of her 
Strong, 
If some Recorder, as in Writ, 
Near to the weary scene should flit 
And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven 
inscrolls the wrong. 

— There are who, rapt to heights of tranced 
trust. 
These tokens claim to feel and see. 
Read radiant hints of times to be — 

Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust. 

122 



A SIGN-SEEKER 

Such scope is granted not my powers in- 
dign . . . 
I have lain in dead men's beds, have 

walked 
The tombs of those with whom I'd talked, 
Called many a gone and goodly one to shape 



And panted for response. But none replies ; 

No warnings loom, nor whisperings 

To open out my limitings, 
And Nescience mutely muses: When a man 
falls he lies. 




MY CICELY 



U7— ) 



" A LIVE ? " — And I leapt in my wonder, 

l\ Was faint of my joyance, 
And grasses and grove shone in garments 
Of glory to me. 



" She lives, in a plenteous well-being, 

To-day as aforehand ; 
The dead bore the name — though a rare 
one — 
The name that bore she." 
124 



MY CICELY 

She lived ... I, afar in the city 

Of frenzy-led factions, 
Had squandered green years and maturer 

In bowing the knee 

To Baals illusive and specious, 
Till chance had there voiced me 

That one I loved vainly in nonage 
Had ceased her to be. 

The passion the planets had scowled on, 

And change had let dwindle, 
Her death-rumor smartly relifted 

To full apogee. 

I mounted a steed in the dawning 

With acheful remembrance. 
And made for the ancient West Highway 

To far Exonb'ry. 

Passing heaths, and the House of Long 
Sieging, 
I neared the thin steeple 
125 



MY CICELY 

That tops the fair fane of Poore's olden 
Episcopal see ; 



And, changing anew my onbearer, 

I traversed the dovvnland 
Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains 

Bulge barren of tree; 

And still sadly onward I followed 

That Highway the Icen, 
Which trails its pale ribbon down Wessex 

O'er lynchet and lea. 

Along through the Stour-bordered Forum, 

Where Legions had wayfared, 
And where the slow river upglasses 

Its green canopy, 

And by Weatherbury Castle, and therence 

Through Casterbridge, bore I, 
To tomb her whose light, in my deeming, 

Extinguished had He. 
126 



MY CICELY 

No highwayman's trot blew the night-wind 

To me so Hfe-weaiy, 
But only the creak of the gibbets 

Or wagoners' jee. 

Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly 

Above me from southward, 
And north the hill-fortress of Ecjo-ar, 

And square Pummerie. 

The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams, 

The Axe, and the Otter 
I passed, to the gate of the city 

Where Exe scents the sea ; 

Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing, 

I learnt 'twas not my Love 
To whom Mother Church had just murmured 

A last lullaby. 

— " Then, where dwells the Canon's kins- 
woman. 
My friend of aforetime?" — 

127 



MY CICELY 

('Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings 
And new ecstasy.) 

"She wedded." — "Ah!" — "Wedded beneath 
her — 

She keeps the stage-hostel 
Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway — 

The famed Lions-Three. 

■*' Her spouse was her lackey — no option 
'Twixt wedlock and worse things ; 

A lapse over-sad for a lady 
Of her pedigree !" 

I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered 

To shades of green laurel : 
Too ghastly had grown those first tidings 

So brightsome of blee ! 

For, on my ride hither, Ld halted 

Awhile at the Lions, 
And her — her whose name had once opened 

My heart as a key — 
128 



MV CICELY 

I'd looked on, unknowing, and witnessed 

Her jests with the tapsters. 
Her Hquor-fired face, her thick accents 

In naming her fee. 

** O God, why this hocus satiric I" 

I cried in my anguish : 
*' O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten — 

That Thing — meant it thee ! 

*' Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted, 

Were grief I could compass ; 
Depraved — 'tis for Christ's poor dependent 

A cruel decree !" 

I backed on the Highway; but passed not 

The hostel. Within there 
Too mocking to Love's re-expression 

Was Time's repartee I 

Uptracking where Legions had wayfared. 

By cromlechs unstoried, 
And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains, 

In self-colloquy, 
I 129 



MY CICELY 

A feeling stirred in me and strengthened 

That she was not my Love, 
But she of the garth, who lay rapt in 

Her long reverie. 

And thence till to-day I persuade me 

That this was the true one ; 
That Death stole intact her young dearness 

And innocency. 

Frail-witted, illuded they call me ; 

I may be. 'Tis better 
To dream than to own the debasement 

Of sweet Cicely. 

Moreover I rate it unseemly 

To hold that kind Heaven 
Could work such device — to her ruin 

And my misery. 

So, lest I disturb my choice vision, 

I shun the West Highway, 
Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms 

From blackbird and bee ; 



MY CICELY 

And feel that with slumber half-conscious 

She rests in the church-hay, 
Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time 

When lovers were we. 




HER IMMORTALITY 

UPON a noon I pilgrimed through 
A pasture, mile by mile, 
Unto the place where I last saw 
My dead Love's living smile. 



And sorrowing I lay me down 
Upon the heated sod : 

It seemed as if my body pressed 
The very ground she trod. 







i^'" '''''- -s^^^^^^^U 



HER 1 M M O R T A L I T Y 

I lay, and thouglit ; and in a trance 
She came and stood mc by — 

The same, even to the marvellous ray 
That used to light her eye. 

*' You draw me, and I come to you, 
My faithful one," she said, 

In voice that had the moving tone 
It bore in maidenhead. 

She said : " 'Tis seven years since I died 

Few now remember me ; 
My husband clasps another bride ; 

My children mothers she. 

'' My brethren, sisters, and my friends 
Care not to meet my sprite : 

Who prized me most I did not know 
Till I passed down from sight." 

I said : *' My days are lonely here ; 

I need thy smile alway: 
I'll use this night my ball or blade, 

And join thee ere the day." 
135 



HER IMMORTALITY 

A tremor stirred her tender lips, 
Which parted to dissuade : 

** That cannot be, O friend," she cried 
" Think, I am but a Shade ! 

"A Shade but in its mindful ones 

Has immortality ; 
By living, me you keep alive, 

By dying you slay me. 

" In you resides my single power 
Of sweet continuance here ; 

On your fidelity I count 

Through many a coming year." 

— I started through me at her plight, 

So suddenly confessed : 
Dismissing late distaste for life, 

I craved its bleak unrest. 

" I will not die, my One of all ! — 
To lengthen out thy days 

I'll guard me from minutest harms 
That may invest my ways !" 

136 



HER IMMORTALITY 

She smiled and went. Since then she comes 
Oft when her birth-moon cHmbs, 

Or at the seasons' ingresses 
Or anniversary times ; 

But grows my grief. When I surcease, 
Through whom alone lives she, 

Ceases my Love, her words, her ways, 
Never again to be ! 



THE IVY-WIFE 

I LONGED to love a full - boughed 
beech 
And be as high as he : 
I stretched an arm within his reach, 

And signalled unity. 
But with his drip he forced a breach, 
And tried to poison me. 



I gave the grasp of partnership 
To one of other race — 



T HE lYY - \X I ¥ E 

A plane: he barked him strip by strip 
From upper bough to base ; 

And mc therewith ; for gone my grip, 
My arms could not enlace. 

In new affection next I strove 

To coll an ash I saw, 
And he in trust received my love ; 

Till with my soft green claw 
I cramped and bound him as I wove . . 

Such was my love : ha-ha ! 



By this I gained his strength and height 

Without his rivalry. 
But in my triumph I lost sight 

Of afterhaps. Soon he, 
Being bark -bound, flagged, snapped, fell out- 
right, 

And in his fall felled me! 



A MEETING WITH DESPAIR 

AS evening shaped I found me on a moor 
Which sight could scarce sustain : 
The black lean land, of featureless contour, 
Was like a tract in pain. 

" This scene, like my own life," I said, " is 
one 
Where many glooms abide; 
Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun — 

Lightless on every side. 
140 



A MEETING WITH DESPAIR 

I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure -caught 

To see the contrast there : 
The ray -lit clouds gleamed glory; and I 
thought, 

"There's solace everywhere !" 



Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood 

I dealt me silently 
As one perverse — misrepresenting Good 

In graceless mutiny. 



Against the horizon's dim-discerned wheel 
A form rose, strange of mould : 

That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel 
Rather than could behold. 



*' 'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies 
spent 
To darkness !" croaked the Thing. 
" Not if you look aloft !" said I, intent 
On my new reasoning. 
141 



A MEETING WITH DESPAIR 

" Yea — but await awhile !" he cried. '' Ho- 
ho!— 
Look now aloft and see !" 
I looked. There, too, sat night : Heaven's 
radiant show 
Had gone. Then chuckled he. 



UNKNOWING 

WHEN, soul in soul reflected, 
We breathed an aethered air, 
When we neglected 
All things elsewhere, 
And left the friendly friendless 
To keep our love aglow. 

We deemed it endless , . . 
— We did not know ! 

When, by mad passion goaded, 
We planned to hie away, 
143 



U N K N O W^ 1 N G 

But, unforeboded, 

The storm-shafts gray 
So heavily down-pattered 
That none could forthward go, 

Our lives seemed shattered . . . 

— We did not know ! 

When I found you, helpless lying. 
And you waived my deep misprise, 

And swore me, dying. 

In phantom-guise 
To wing to me when grieving. 
And touch away my woe, 

We kissed, believing . . . 

— We did not know ! 

But though, your powers outreckoning. 
You hold you dead and dumb, 

Or scorn my beckoning. 

And will not come ; 
And I say, " 'Twere mood ungainly 
To store her memory so :" 

I say it vainly — 

I feel and know ! 
144 



FRIENDS BEYOND 

WILLIAM DEWY, Tranter Reuben, 
Farmer Ledlow late at plough, 
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's, 
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mell- 
stock churchyard now ! 

'' Gone," I call them, gone for good, that 
group of local hearts and heads ; 
Yet at mothy curfew-tide, 
And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes 
it back from walls and leads, 
K 145 



FRIENDS BEYOND 

They've a way of whispering to me — 
fellow-wight who yet abide — 
In the muted, measured note 

Of a ripple under archways, or a lone 
cave's stillicide : 

"We have triumphed: this achievement 
turns the bane to antidote, 
Unsuccesses to success, 

Many thought-worn eves and morrows 
to a morrow free of thought. 



** No more need we corn and clothing, 
feel of old terrestrial stress ; 
Chill detraction stirs no sigh ; 

Fear of death has even bygone us: death 
gave all that we possess." 

W. D, — "Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that 

I set such vallie by." 
Squire. — "You may hold the manse in fee, 
You may wed my spouse, my children's 
memory of me may decry." 
146 



FRIENDS BEYOND 

Lady. — " You may have my rich brocades, 
my laces ; take each household key ; 
Ransack coffer, desk, bureau ; 
Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, 
con the letters kept by me." 

Far. — " Ye mid zell my favorite heifer, ye 
mid let the charlock grow, 
Foul the grinterns, give up thrift." 

Wife. — " If ye break my best blue china, 
children, I sha'n't care or ho." 

All — " We've no wish to hear the tidings, 
how the people's fortunes shift ; 
What your daily doings are ; 
Who are wedded, born, divided ; if your 
lives beat slow or swift. 

" Curious not the least are we if our 
intents you make or mar, 
If you quire to our old tune. 
If the City stage still passes, if the weirs 
still roar afar." 
H7 



FRIENDS BEYOND 

-Thus, with very gods' composure, freed 
those crosses late and soon 
Which, in Hfe, the Trine allow 
(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all 
that haps beneath the moon, 

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer 
Ledlow late at plough, 
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's, 
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, mur- 
mur mildly to me now. 




TO OUTER NATURE 



SHOW thee as I thought thee 
When I early sought thee, 
Omen-scouting, 
All undoubting 
Love alone had wrought thee — 
149 



TO OUTER NATURE 

Wrought thee for my pleasure, 
Planned thee as a measure 

For expounding 

And resounding 
Glad things that men treasure. 

O for but a moment 

Of that old endowment — 

Light to gaily 

See thy daily 
Irised embovvment ! 

But such readorning 

Time forbids with scorning — 

Makes me see things 

Cease to be things 
They were in my morning. 

Fad'st thou, glow-forsaken, 
Darkness-overtaken ! 

Thy first sweetness. 

Radiance, meetness. 
None shall reawaken. 
ISO 



TO OUTER N A T U R E 

Why not sempiternal 
Thou and I ? Our vernal 
Brightness keeping, 
Time outleaping ; 
Passed the hodiernal ! 



THOUGHTS OF PH 



AT NEWS OF HER DEATH 

NOT a line of her writing have I, 
Not a thread of her hair, 
No mark of her late time as dame in her 
dwelling, whereby 

I may picture her there ; 
And in vain do I urge my unsight 
To conceive my lost prize 
At her close, whom I knew when her dreams 
were upbrimming with light, 
And with laughter her eyes. 
152 



THOUGHTS OF PH A 

What scenes spread around her last days, 
Sad, shining, or dim ? 
Did her gifts and compassions enray and 
enarch her sweet ways 
With an aureate nimb ? 
Or did Hfe-light decline from her years, 
And mischances control 
Her full day-star ; unease, or regret, or fore- 
bodings, or fears 

Disennoble her soul ? 



Thus I do but the phantom retain 
Of the maiden of yore 
As my relic ; yet haply the best of her — 
fined in my brain 
It may be the more 
That no line of her writing have I, 
Nor a thread of her hair, 
No mark of her late time as dame in her 
dwelling, whereby 

I may picture her there. 

Mairh, 1S90. 



MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS 

To M. H. 

WE passed where flag and flower 
Signalled a jocund throng; 
We said : " Go to, the hour 
Is apt!" — and joined the song; 
And, kindling, laughed at life and care, 
Although we knew no laugh lay there. 



We walked where shy birds stood 
Watching us, wonder-dumb ; 
156 



M 1 D D L E - A G E ENTHUSIASMS 

Their friendship met our mood ; 

We cried : " We'll often come : 
We'll come morn, noon, eve, everywhen !" 
— We doubted we should come again. 

We joyed to see strange sheens 
Leap from quaint leaves in shade ; 
A secret light of greens 
They'd for their pleasure made. 
We said : *' We'll set such sorts as these !" 
— W^e knew with night the wish would cease, 

" So sweet the place," we said, 

" Its tacit tales so dear, 

Our thoughts, when breath has sped, 

Will meet and mingle here !" . . . 
" Words !" mused we. " Passed the mortal 

door, 
Our thoughts will reach this nook no more." 



IN A WOOD 

See ''The Woodlanders" 

PALE beech and pine-tree blue, 
Set in one clay, 
Bough to bough cannot you 

Bide out your day? 
When the rains skim and skip, 
Why mar sweet comradeship, 
Blighting with poison-drip 
Neighborly spray? 

Heart-halt and spirit-lame, 
City-opprest, 

158 



IN A WOOD 

Unto this wood I came 

As to a nest ; 
Dreaming that sylvan peace 
Offered the harrowed ease — 
Nature a soft release 

From men's unrest. 

But, having entered in, 

Great growths and small 
Show them to men akin — 

Combatants all ! 
Sycamore shoulders oak. 
Bines the slim sapling yoke. 
Ivy-spun halters choke 
Elms stout and tall. 

Touches from ash, O wych. 
Sting you like scorn ! 

You, too, brave hollies, twitch 
Sidelong from thorn. 

Even the rank poplars bear 

Illy a rival's air. 

Cankering in black despair 
If overborne. 
159 



IN A WOOD 

Since, then, no grace I find 

Taught me of trees, 
Turn I back to my kind. 

Worthy as these. 
There at least smiles abound. 
There discourse trills around, 
There, now and then, are found 
Life-]oyalties. 



1887-1896. 



TO A LADY 

OFFENDED BY A BOOK OF THE WRITER'S 

NOW that my page upcloses, doomed, 
maybe, 
Never to press thy cosy cushions more, 
Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore, 
Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me : 

Knowing thy natural receptivity, 
I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve, 
My sombre image, warped by insidious heave 
Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee. 
L i6i 



TO A LADY 

So be it. I have borne such. Let thy dreams 
Of me and mine diminish day by day, 
And yield their space to shine of smugger 

things ; 
Till I shape to thee but in fitful gleams, 
And then in far and feeble visitings, 
And then surcease. Truth will be truth 

alway. 



TO AN ORPHAN CHILD 

A WHIMSEY 

AH, child, thou art but half thy darling 
mother's ; 
Hers couldst thou wholly be, 
My light in thee would outglow all in 
others ; 
She would relive to me. 
But niggard Nature's trick of birth 

Bars, lest she overjoy. 
Renewal of the loved on earth 
Save with alloy. 
163 



TO AN ORPHAN CHILD 

The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden, 
For love and loss like mine — 

No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden ; 
Only with fickle eyne. 

To her mechanic artistry 

My dreams are all unknown, 

And why I wish that thou couldst be 
But One's alone I 




NATURE'S QUESTIONING 

WHEN I look forth at dawning, 
pool, 
Field, flock, and lonely tree, 
All seem to look at me 
Like chastened children sitting silent in a 
school ; 

Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn, 
As though the master's ways 
Through the long teaching days 
Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and 
overborne. 

165 



NATURE'S QUESTIONING 

And on them stirs, in lippings mere 
(As if once clear in call, 
But now scarce breathed at all) — 
" We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us 
here ! 



" Has some Vast Imbecility, 

Mighty to build and blend, 
But impotent to tend. 
Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry ? 



" Or come we of an Automaton 
Unconscious of our pains? . . . 
Or are we live remains 
Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye 



" Or is it that some high Plan betides, 
As yet not understood, 
Of Evil stormed by Good, 
We the Forlorn Hope over which Achieve- 
ment strides?" 

1 66 



I 



NATURE'S QUESTIONING 

Thus things around. No answerer I. . . , 
Meanwhile the winds, and rains, 
And Earth's old glooms and pains 
Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death 
neighbors nigh. 



THE IMPERCIPIENT 

(AT A CATHEDRAL SERVICE) 

THAT from this bright beHeving band 
An outcast I should be, 
That faiths by which my comrades stand 

Seem fantasies to me, 
And mirage-mists their Shining Land, 
Is a drear destiny. 



Why thus my soul should be consigned 
To infelicity, 

i68 




.^ '^ — — 



4U ...LLJ.. ■•:-„,j.^ .a.j^.^^.y^ 



THE I M PERCIPIENT 

"Why always I must feel as blind 

To sights my brethren see, 
Why joys they've found I cannot find, 

Abides a mystery. 

Since heart of mine knows not that ease 
Which they know ; since it be 

That He who breathes All's Well to these 
Breathes no All's Well to me. 

My lack might move their sympathies 
And Christian charity .' 

I am like a gazer who should mark 

An inland company 
Standing upfingered, with, " Hark ! hark ! 

The glorious distant sea !" 
And feel, ''Alas, 'tis but yon dark 

And wind-swept pine to me !" 

Yet I would bear my shortcomings 

With meet tranquillity, 
But for the charge that blessed things 

I'd liefer have unbe. 
171 



THE IM PERCIPIENT 

O, doth a bird deprived of wings 
Go earth-bound wilfully ! 

Enough. As yet disquiet clings 
About us. Rest shall we. 



AT AN INN 

WHEN we as strangers sought 
Their catering care, 
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought 

Of what we were. 
They warmed as they opined 

Us more than friends — 
That we had all resigned 
For love's dear ends. 

And that swift sympathy 
With living love 
173 



AT AN INN 

Which quicks the world — ^maybe 

The spheres above, 
Made them our ministers, 

Moved them to say, 
"Ah, God, that bhss Hke theirs 

Would flush our day!" 

And we were left alone 

As Love's own pair ; 
Yet never the love-light shone 

Between us there ! 
But that which chilled the breath 

Of afternoon, 
And palsied unto death 

The pane-fly's tune. 

The kiss their zeal foretold, 

And now deemed come, 
Came not : within his hold 

Love lingered numb. 
Why cast he on our port 

A bloom not ours? 
Why shaped us for his sport 

In after-hours? 
174 



AT AN INN 

As we seemed we were not 

That day afar, 
And now we seem not what 

We aching are. 
O severing sea and land, 

O laws of men, 
Ere death, once let us stand 

As we stood then ! 



THE SLOW NATURE 

(AN INCIDENT OF FROOM VALLEY) 

THY husband — poor, poor Heart ! — is 
dead — 
Dead, out by Moreford Rise; 
A bull escaped the barton-shed, 
Gored him, and there he lies!" 

— '' Ha, ha — go away ! 'Tis a tale, methink, 
Thou joker Kit !" laughed she. 

" I've known thee many a year, Kit Twink, 
And ever hast thou fooled me !" 
176 



THE SLOW NATURE 

— *' But, Mistress Damon — I can swear 
Thy goodman John is dead! 

And soon th'lt hear their feet who bear 
His body to his bed." 



So unwontedly sad was the merry man's 
face — 
That face which had long deceived — 
That she gazed and gazed ; and then could 
trace 
The truth there ; and she believed. 

She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge, 
And scanned far Egdon-side ; 

And stood ; and you heard the wind-swept 
sedge 
And the rippling Froom ; till she cried : 

'' O my chamber's untidied, unmade my bed, 
Though the day has begun to wear ! 

* What a slovenly hussif !' it will be said. 
When they all go up my stair!" 

M 177 



THE SLOW NATURE 

She disappeared ; and the joker stood 
Depressed by his neighbor's doom, 

And amazed that a wife struck to widow- 
hood 
Thought first of her unkempt room. 

But a fortnight thence she could take no foodv 
And she pined in a slow decay; 

While Kit soon lost his mournful mood 
And laughed in his ancient way. 



1894. 



IN A EWELEAZE NEAR 
WEATHERBURY 

THE years have gathered grayly 
Since I danced upon this leaze 
With one who kindled gayly 

Love's fitful ecstasies ! 
But despite the term as teacher, 

I remain what I was then 
In each essential feature 
Of the fantasies of men. 

Yet I note the little chisel 
Of ever-napping Time, 
179 



IN A EWELEAZE 

Defacing ghast and grizzel 

The blazon of my prime. 
When at night he thinks me sleeping, 

I feel him boring sly 
Within my bones, and heaping 

Quaintest pains for by-and-by. 

Still, I'd go the world with Beauty, 

I would laugh with her and sing, 
I would shun divinest duty 

To resume her worshipping. 
But she'd scorn my brave endeavor, 

She would not balm the breeze 
By murmuring "Thine for ever!" 

As she did upon this leaze. 



1890. 



ADDITIONS 



THE FIRE AT TRANTER 
SWEATLEY'S 

THEY had long met o' Zundays — her 
true love and she — 
And at junketings, maypoles, and flings ; 
But she bode wi' a thirtover uncle, and he 
Swore by noon and by night that her good- 
man should be 
Naibor Sweatley — a gaffer oft weak at the 

knee 
From taking o' sommat more cheerful than 
tea — 
Who tranted, and moved people's things. 
185 



FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY'S 

She cried, '' O pray pity me !" Nought 
would he hear ; 
Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed. 
She chid when her Love was for clinking off 

wi' her. 
The pa'son was told, as the season drew near 
To throw over pu'pit the names of the peair 
As fitting one flesh to be made. 



The wedding-day dawned and the morning 
drew on ; 
The couple stood bridegroom and bride ; 
The evening was passed, and when midnight 

had gone 
The folks horned out, '' God save the King," 
and anon 
The two home-along gloomily hied. 

The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick 
and drear 
To be thus of his darling deprived : 
He roamed in the dark ath'art field, mound, 
and mere, 

1 86 



FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY'S 

And, a'most without knowini^ it, found himself 

near 
The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear, 
Where the lantern-hght showed 'em arrived. 



The bride sought her cham'er so cahn and 
so pale 
That a Northern had thoucrht her resi^jned ; 
But to eyes that had seen her in tide-times of 

weal. 
Like the white cloud o' smoke, the red battle- 
field's vail. 
That look spak' of havoc behind. 



The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to 
drain, 
Then reeled to the linhay for more. 
When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff 

from his grain — 
Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi' might 
and wi' main, 
And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun 
roar. 

187 



FIRE AT TRANTER SVVEATLEY'S 

Young Tim away yond, rafted up by the 
light, 
Through brimble and underwood tears, 
Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping 

thereright 
In the lewth of a codlin-tree, bivering wi* 

fright, 
Wi' on'y her night -rail to screen her from 
sight, 
His lonesome young Barbree appears. 



Her cwold little figure half-naked he views 

Played about by the frolicsome breeze, 
Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes, 
All bare and besprinkled wi' Fall's chilly 

dews. 
While her great gallied eyes, through her 
hair hanging loose, 
Sheened as stars through a tardle o' trees. 

She eyed en ; and, as when a weir-hatch is 
drawn, 
Her tears, penned by terror afore, 
1 88 



( 



FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY'S 

With a rushing of sobs in a shower were 

stravvn, 
Till her power to pour 'em seemed wasted 

and gone 
From the heft o' misfortune she bore. 



'' O Tim, my ozun Tim I must call 'ee — I 
will ! 
All the world ha' turned round on me so ! 
Can you help her who loved 'ee, though acting 

so ill? 
Can you pity her misery — feel for her still ? 
When worse than her body so quivering and 
chill 
Is her heart in its winter o' woe ! 

*' I think I mid almost ha' borne it," she said, 
" Had my griefs one by one come to 
hand ; 
But O, to be slave to thik husbird for bread, 
And then, upon top o' that, driven to wed, 
And then, upon top o' that, burnt out o' bed, 
Is more than my nater can stand !" 
i8q 



FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY'S 

Tim's soul like a lion 'ithin en outsprung — 
(Tim had a great soul when his feelings were 

wrung) — 
''Feel for 'ee, dear Barbree?" he cried; 
And his warm working -jacket about her he 

flung, 
Made a back, horsed her up, till behind him 

she clung 
Like a chiel on a gipsy, her figure uphung 
By the sleeves that around her he tied. 



Over piggeries, and mixens, and apples, and 

hay, 

They lumpered straight into the night ; 

And finding bylong where a halter-path lay. 

At dawn reached Tim's house, on'y seen on 

their way 
By a naibor or two who were up wi' the day ; 
But they gathered no clue to the sight. 

Then tender Tim Tankens he searched here 
and there 
For some garment to clothe her fair skin ; 
190 



FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEYS 

But though he had breeches and waistcoats 

to spare, 
He had nothing quite seemly for Barbree to 

wear, 
Who, half shrammed to death, stood and 

cried on a chair 
At the caddie she found herself in. 



There was one thing to do, and that one 
thing he did, 
He lent her some clouts of his own. 
And she took 'em perforce; and while in 

'em she slid, 
Tim turned to the winder, as modesty bid, 
Thinking, '* O that the picter my duty keeps 
hid 
To the sight o' my eyes mid be shown !" 

In the tallet he stowed her; there huddied 
she lay. 
Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her 
limbs ; 
But most o' the time in a mortal bad way, 
191 



FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY'S 

Well knowing that there'd be the divel to pay 
If 'twere found that, instead o' the elements' 
prey, 
She was living in lodgings at Tim's. 



^' Where's the tranter ?" said men and boys ; 
" where can er be?" 
" Where's the tranter ?" said Barbree alone. 
" Where on e'th is the tranter ?" said every- 

bod-y : 
They sifted the dust of his perished roof-tree. 
And all they could find was a bone. 

Then the uncle cried, " Lord, pray have 
mercy on me !" 
And in terror began to repent. 
But before 'twas complete, and till sure she 

was free, 
Barbree drew up her loft-ladder, tight turned 

her key — 
Tim bringing up breakfast and dinner and 
tea — 
Till the news of her hiding got vent. 
192 



FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY'S 

Then followed the custom -kept rout, shout, 
and flare 

Of a skimmington-ride through the naibor- 
hood, ere 
Folk had proof o' wold Sweatley's decay. 

Whereupon decent people all stood in a stare, 

Saying Tim and his lodger should risk it, 
and pair: 

So he took her to church. An' some laugh- 
ing lads there 

Cried to Tim, "After Sweatley!" She said, 
" I declare 
I stand as a maiden to-day!" 

Wiitten 1866 ; printed 1875. 



HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT 

For a. W. B. 

SHE sought the Studios, beckoning to her 
side 
An arch-designer, for she planned to build. 
He was of wise contrivance, deeply skilled 
In every intervolve of high and wide — 
Well fit to be her guide. 

"Whatever it be," 
Responded he, 
With cold, clear voice, and cold, clear view, 
194 



I 



HEIRESS AND A R C H r F E C F 

" In true accord with prudent fasliionings 
For such vicissitudes as Hving brings, 
And thwarting not the law of stable things, 
That will I do." 



*' Shape me," she said, " high walls with 

tracery 
And open ogive-work, that scent and hue 
Of buds, and travelling bees, may come in 

through. 
The note of birds, and singings of the sea, 
For these are much to me." 



'' An idle whim !" 
Broke forth from him 
Whom nought could warm to gallantries : 
*' Cede all these buds and birds, the zephyr's 

call, 
And scents, and hues, and things that falter all, 
And choose as best the close and surly 
wall, 

For winter's freeze." 
195 



HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT 

''Then frame," she cried, "wide fronts of 

crystal glass, 
That I may show my laughter and my light — 
Light like the sun's by day, the stars' by 

night — 
Till rival heart-queens, envying, wail, ' Alas, 

Her glory!' as they pass." 



" O maid misled !" 
He sternly said, 
Whose facile foresight pierced her dire ; 
" Where shall abide the soul when, sick of 

glee. 
It shrinks, and hides, and prays no eye may 

see? 
Those house them best who house for secrecy. 
For you will tire." 

'* A little chamber, then, with swan and dove 
Ranged thickly, and engrailed with rare device 
Of reds and purples, for a Paradise 
Wherein my Love may greet me, I my Love, 
When he shall know thereof?" 
196 



HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT 

" This, too, is ill," 

He answered still, 
The man who swayed her like a shade. 
" An hour will come when sight of such 

sweet nook 
Would bring a bitterness too sharp to brook, 
When brighter eyes have won away his look ; 

For you will fade." 

Then said she faintly: '* O, contrive some 

way — 
Some narrow winding turret, quite mine own, 
To reach a loft where I may grieve alone ! 
It is a slight thing ; hence do not, I pray, 

This last dear fancy slay !" 

" Such winding ways 

Fit not your days," 
Said he, the man of measuring eye ; 
" I must even fashion as my rule declares. 
To wit : Give space (since life ends unawares) 
To hale a cofifined corpse adown the stairs ; 

For you will die." 



1867. 



THE TWO MEN 

THERE were two youths of equal age, 
Wit, station, strength, and parentage ; 
They studied at the self-same schools, 
And shaped their thoughts by common 
rules. 



One pondered on the life of man. 
His hopes, his ending, and began 
To rate the Market's sordid war 
As something scarce worth living for. 



THE TWO MEN 

" I'll brace to higher aims," said he, 
'' I'll further Truth and Purity ; 
Thereby to mend the mortal lot 
And sweeten sorrow. Thrive I not, 

" Winning their hearts, my kind will give 
Enough that I may lowly live, 
And house my Love in some dim dell. 
For pleasing them and theirs so well." 

Idly attired, with features wan, 

In secret swift he labored on ; 

Such press of power had brought much gold 

Applied to things of meaner mould. 

Sometimes he wished his aims had been 
To gather gains like other men ; 
Then thanked his God he'd traced his track 
Too far for wish to drag him back. 

He looked from his loft one day 
To where his slighted garden lay ; 
Nettles and hemlock hid each lawn, 
And every flower was starved and gone. 



THE TWO MEN 

He fainted in his heart, whereon 
He rose, and sought his pHghted one, 
Resolved to loose her bond withal, 
Lest she should perish in his fall. 

He met her with a careless air, 
As though he'd ceased to find her fair, 
And said : " True love is dust to me ; 
I cannot kiss : I tire of thee !" 

(That she might scorn him was he fain, 
To put her sooner out of pain ; 
For incensed love breathes quick and dies, 
When famished love a-lingering lies.) 

Once done, his soul was so betossed. 
It found no more the force it lost : 
Hope was his only drink and food. 
And hope extinct, decay ensued. 

And, living long so closely penned, 
He had not kept a single friend ; 
He dwindled thin as phantoms be, 
And drooped to death in poverty. . . . 



THE TWO MEN 

Meantime his schoolmate had gone out 
To join the fortune-finding rout ; 
He liked the winnings of the mart, 
But wearied of the working part. 

He turned to seek a privy lair, 
Neglecting note of garb and hair. 
And day by day reclined and thought 
How he might live by doing nought. 

*' I plan a valued scheme," he said 
To some. " But lend me of your bread, 
And when the vast result looms nigh. 
In profit you shall stand as I." 

Yet they took counsel to restrain 
Their kindness till they saw the gain ; 
And, since his substance now had run, 
He rose to do what might be done. 

He went unto his Love by night, 
And said : " My Love, I faint in fight : 
Deserving as thou dost a crown. 
My cares shall never drag thee down." 
203 



THE TWO MEN 

(He had descried a maid whose line 
Would hand her on much corn and wine. 
And held her far in worth above 
One who could only pray and love.) 

But this Fair read him ; whence he failed 
To do the deed so blithely hailed ; 
He saw his projects wholly marred, 
And gloom and want oppressed him hard 

Till, living to so mean an end, 
Whereby he'd lost his every friend, 
He perished in a pauper sty, 
His mate the dying pauper nigh. 

And moralists, reflecting, said. 

As "dust to dust" in burial read 

Was echoed from each cofTin-lid, 

" These men were like in all they did." 



[866. 



LINES 

spoken by Miss Ada Reran at the Lyceum Theatre, July 
23, 1890, at a performance on behalf of Lady Jeunes 
Holiday Fund for City Children 

BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and 
aims, 
Permit the one brief word the occasion claims ; 
— When mumming and grave projects are 

allied, 
Perhaps an Epilogue is justified. 

Our under-purpose has, in truth, to-day 
Commanded most our musings ; least the play : 
205 



LINES 

A purpose futile but for your good-will 

Swiftly responsive to the cry of ill : 

A purpose all too limited ! — to aid 

Frail human flowerets, sicklied by the shade^ 

In winning some short spell of upland breeze, 

Or strengthening sunlight on the level leas. 



Who has not marked, where the full cheek 

should be, 
Incipient lines of lank flaccidity, 
Lymphatic pallor where the pink should 

glow. 
And where the throb of transport, pulses 

low ? — 
Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line, 
O wondering child, unwitting Time's design, 
Why should Art add to Nature's quan- 
dary, 
And worsen ill by thus immuring thee? 
— That races can do despite to their own, 
That Might supernal do indeed condone 
Wrongs individual for the general ease, 
Instance the proof in victims such as these. 
206 



LINES 

Launched into thoroughfares too thronged 
before, 

Mothered by those whose protest is *' No 
more I" 

VitaHzed without option : who shall say 

That did Life hang on choosing — Yea or 
Nay — 

They had not scorned it with such pen- 
alty, 

And nothingness implored of Destiny? 



And yet behind the horizon smile serene 
The down, the cornland, and the stretching 

green — 
Space — the child's heaven : scenes which at 

least ensure 
Some palliative for ill they cannot cure. 



Dear friends — now moved by this poor show 

of ours 
To make your own long joy in buds and 

bowers 

207 



LINES 

For one brief while the joy of infant eyes, 
Changing their urban murk to paradise — 
You have our thanks ! — may your reward in- 
clude 
More than our thanks, far more: their grati- 
tude. 



- 1 LOOK INTO MY GLASS " 

1L00K into my glass, 
And view my wasting skin, 
And say, " Would God it came to 
pass 
My heart had shrunk as thin !" 



For then, I, undistrest 

By hearts grown cold to me, 
Could lonely wait my endless rest 
With equanimity, 
o 209 



"I LOOK INTO MY GLASS'' 

But Time, to make me grieve, 
Part steals, lets part abide ; 

And shakes this fragile frame at eve 
With throbbings of noontide. 



THE END 



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^^^^Any of the above works will he sent by mail, postage pre- 
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